New Hutchinson store wants to foster community | Local

T homas Gauvain isn’t just trying to run a new Main Street business. At Sanctuary Games, he’s also trying to build a community.

“Community is everything,” he said Tuesday evening as tables started to fill up with Hutchinson residents looking to play card games or hang out while others checked out the growing inventory of games.

Gauvain’s new store at 40 Main St. S., Hutchinson, right across from Library Square, sells card games such as Magic: The Gathering and Munchkin, tabletop board games such as X-Wing, and tabletop roleplaying games such as Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons.

“I’m focusing first on some of the specific and exotic games,” Gauvain said. “I will be carrying all the traditional games like Risk and Axis and Allies and Monopoly and those kinds of games very soon as well.”

The doors of Sanctuary Games first opened on Feb. 9, and business picked up faster than Gauvain thought it would.

“My first day I had 60 people in here,” he said. “… Last Saturday I had so many people come in the door that there was standing room only, and half of them had to leave because there was no place to sit down. I’m doubling the amount of tables I have before this weekend so I don’t run into that situation again.”

Gauvain originally planned to use the back room for a computer repair service, but he said gaming business…